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Checkmate! Doctor Coppelius's Live Chessboard
Checkmate! Doctor Coppelius's Live Chessboard is the 36th episode of On Pointe! Pretty Cure! Synopsis The episode begins as Haruki and Yukari are playing a game of chess following dance practice. Akane is studying their game intently, and Odile quips that she may be a talented ballerina, but she never once got to play a game of chess in her life. "One of the big drawbacks of having spent much of your life as an assassin for an evil overlord," she laments just before Haruki checkmates Yukari with his queen piece. The next day, Yukari is absent from Akane's homeroom class yet again. Wondering what happened, she bumps right into Hisako between classes, and Hisako is in a panic, because Sakura's missing. Akane promptly calls Haruki and asks if he's got any time following his session at the Ikeda Ballet Company, because they're going on a missing persons search as soon as possible. After classes are over for the day, Astaire hurries over to Camargo and hands his sister a note. Irina realizes that it is a ransom note and that Yukari and Sakura had been kidnapped by Dr. Coppelius, who challenges the other Cures to meet him in the Iron Star factory. Akane promptly calls Haruki and tells him to meet her and Odile at Iron Star as soon as he's ready. Later that day, the limousine pulls up at the factory, and Haruki steps out to meet up with Akane and Odile. Odile tells him that Akane suspects Dr. Coppelius had taken their friends somewhere in the factory, but they've looked around a few times over and seen no sign of life thus far, only a portal somewhere in a pool of molten steel. They run to the molten steel and climb up a set of stairs. Realizing that Coppelius had placed the portal right under their noses and had been expecting them to jump in, Odile takes the dive first, going cleanly through the portal. Akane and Haruki, though hesitant at first, follow. They land not in a fiery pit, but in a pit full of sentient plants that are choking Odile half to death as she's panicking. Akane and Haruki, meanwhile, slip right through the plants cleanly by staying calm. As Akane looks around for Yukari and Sakura, Haruki transforms briefly to free Odile from the plants' tight grip with a bog-standard Fiery Leap. After Odile takes a moment to catch her breath, they hurry through an open door Akane had noticed which closes as soon as all three of them have gone through it. Some lights turn on to reveal a complete set of life-sized chess pieces. Odile realizes that Coppelius wants them to beat him in a game of chess. Haruki volunteers to be the Queen, Akane decides to play as one of the Bishops, and Odile opts to be one of the Knights. As the relevant black chess pieces step aside and the Cures take their places, Haruki reminds Akane and Odile that white always moves first as one of the eight white pawns moves forward two spaces. With Odile doing a surprisingly good job of directing the black chess pieces from atop the Knight's horse, the black pieces move silently at her command. After Akane makes a move four squares to the right, the enemy Queen takes the other black Knight, grabs him off his horse, and throws him off the board, sending the horse on a retreat. This leaves an opening for Haruki to take an enemy Bishop now directly in his path, sending him flying off the board with a mawashi-geri ("Even a queen must be proficient in hand-to-hand combat."). In the course of the match, Odile has to twice bail both Akane and Haruki out of certain danger and, in her efforts, takes out a surprising number of white pieces ("Not bad for someone who's never played before."). At the climax of the game, Odile realizes that the only way they can win this and save Yukari and Sakura is if she exposes herself to the enemy Queen. When Akane and Haruki object, Odile reminds them what chess is all about and that she's making the sacrificial play so they can see Yukari and Sakura again. Moving herself to H3, she puts the enemy King in check, only for the enemy Queen to throw her off the board. This allows Akane to make her move and put the King in checkmate. Trivia * This episode's plot is inspired by the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone chapter "Through the Trapdoor"--specifically, the scene where the Golden Trio engages with the head of their house in a magical life-sized chess game. The participating Cures even take the same places the Golden Trio did for their game in its film adaptation. * Due to her real-life untimely passing in September 2017, this is Hiromi Hayakawa's last performance as the Spanish dub's voice of Odile.